While employing a vocabulary of graphic art, artist Mathew Brannon’s work explores social ideals and personal emotions through reductive images. Brannon uses screen printing as his primary method of creation, offering commentary on mass production while also allowing the work to remain in an original format. The artist challenges modes of semiotics by juxtaposing certain graphic images with potent text to elicit a particular emotive response. The human condition and ideas of disappointment and illusion are investigated through cultural symbols and media-related forms. The design element of Brannon’s work illustrates how product packaging and placement has an impact on our feelings of value, sense of self and emotional vulnerability. This year, the artist will present “Try and be grateful” at the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto. In 2006, Brannon exhibited with the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York, David Kordansky Gallery in Basel, Switzerland, and “HYENA” at Jan Winkelmann Gallery in Berlin. The artist attended the University of California and completed his MFA at Columbia University School of Art in New York.

Dieter Appelt is one of Germany’s most influential photographers and videographers. Since 1982, the artist has taught photography, film and video at the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin. In the late 1970’s and 1980’s, the artist’s work was centered on performance art, and his photography developed out of the documentation of his performance. Often, the performances took place within constructed nature-based sculptures or sets and dealt with issues related to primal endurance and decay. This was in part because of the experience of returning home from World War II to find the decomposing bodies of soldiers in neighboring fields. Drawing an obvious influence from artists such as Joseph Bueys, Appelt regards his works as sculptures of time as he often places himself in endurance-testing positions. Appelt has been exhibiting works since the 1970’s and has exhibited extensively in Europe. Major solo museum exhibitions for the artist have occurred at the Guggenheim in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Staatliche Museum in Berlin. The artist is currently represented by Galerie Guy Bartschi is Geneva.

Opening this weekend at Zach Feuer Gallery is Thin Skin II, the first New York-based solo exhibition of artist Daniel Gordon. Using elements of temporary sculpture and collage, the artist is able to construct works from appropriated Internet images and document them in photographic form. The disjointed materials in Gordon’s work operate as a commentary on the contemporary image while simultaneously allowing the conceptual nature of the work to remain personal and unadulterated. Gordon’s work challenges elements of traditional photography and the notions of beauty as it relates to the medium. The photos remain tightly cropped and are suggestive of acitivity outside the immediate image plane. Gordon currently lives and works in New York City. He is a graduate of Bard College, New York (2003) and completed his MFA at Yale University School of Art (2006). The artist presented Flying Pictures and Constructions with Angstrom Gallery in Dallas and GroeflinMaag Gallery in Basel, Switzerland (2004).

By synthesizing ideas of modern technology and the experience of life in the information era, the artist Mark Schoening offers a social commentary about the effects of inescapable media. While the paintings are a reflection of our time, they certainly speak of the possibilities and ramifications of future technological growth. Schoening attempts to capture this atmosphere in a fixed image, allowing the viewer the opportunity to step back and contemplate their relationship to the recent influx of technology, advertising and media and how we process this information. Schoening currently lives and works in Boston. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art and will exhibit this year with artist Shawn El C. Leonardo at the RHYS Gallery in Boston, Mass. Previous exhibitions include “Balletic Disintegration” with Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass., and “Project 604″ at the National Arts Club in New York City.

New York-based artist Benjamin Degen creates paintings that simultaneously represent multiple elements such as figures, landscapes, diagrams and still-lives. Drawing inspiration from the flattened aesthetic of Minoan paintings, Greek amphorae, Kama Sutra illustrations and Chinese landscape paintings, Degen is able to alter space to re-contextualize form and, thus, meaning. The artist strips away the specific identities of his subject matter so that the forms read as patterns without defined boundaries, causing the image connotation to become unclear. The New York City-born artist attended the Cooper Union School of Art and Science (1998) and received a Yale Norfolk Painting Fellowship (1997). Degen has exhibited with Kantor/Feuer Gallery in Los Angeles and with Guil & Greyshkul in New York. The artist was featured in the PS1 MOMA‘s Greater New York exhibition and is included in the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection.

Bay Area artist Tauba Auerbach is currently exhibiting new text-based works at the Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco. Auerbach investigates semantic systems, playfully combining letters to create new meanings, while challenging the limitations of typography and language. Employing elements of hard-edged abstraction, the artist is able to use her experiences as a sign painter to explore the function of lettering and text in society, insightfully inquiring into the meaning of the seemingly random shapes of the alphabet. Auerbach often uses eye charts, binary systems and elementary design to reveal the extensional functions of language. The artist is a graduate of Stanford University in San Francisco (2003) and was featured in her first New York City solo exhibition this past fall at the Deitch Projects. Auerbach, a previous DailyServing feature, also received a review in Artforum for her San Francisco exhibition this month.

The photographic dreamscapes of artist Gregory Crewdson are magnificently choreographed and quietly disturbing. Crewdson is one of America’s most influential photographers who’s reached international acclaim for his mysterious and intriguing photos. Crewdson’s scenes are hyper-manicured with immaculate detail that demand prolonged engagement from viewers. Often, the work is fraught with tension, anxiety and desire that powerfully reveals qualities inherent to suburban American life. Crewdson has often been referred to as a filmmaker’s photographer because of his elaborate sets and self-termed “psychological realism” aesthetic. Crewdson studied photography at SUNY Purchase and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art, where he has been a faculty member since 1993. This year, the artist appeared in an article in TIME and in “Art and Death” in Adbusters. This year, he will be featured in “Drawing on Hopper: Gregory Crewdson/Edward Hopper” at the Williams College Museum of Art. Currently on view is “Gregory Crewdson: 1985-2005,” at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague.